SNCF: larger, less energy-intensive and more agile… what the new TGV M unveiled this Monday ? looks like

This Monday, April 29 morning, the French manufacturer Alstom and its client, SNCF, presented the final design of the future TGV which will chart its route on the LGV Sud-Est line from next year. A machine which will not go any faster, but which changes pace as well as times.

His ancestor was adorned, forty years ago, with an orange which was intended to be the symbol "of technological prowess and performance&quot ;, recalls Christophe Fanichet, general director of SNCF voyageurs. This one is white, the elongated nose adorned with a black ellipse that it shares with its elders, the immaculate sides highlighted with gray bands, which will offer "an effect waves when it is in motion. Those of a river that winds its way through the landscape", says Florence Rousseau, marketing director of TGV M. It will be at more than 300 km/h , tomorrow.

In "harmony with the landscape"

Eight years after the start of the project, SNCF and Alstom, its manufacturer, unveiled this Monday morning in Belfort, where the high-speed trains of the Avelia Horizon series from the industrialist are assembled, the first train of the new TGV M, in its final version.

It came out of a discreet hangar, 700 ms from the immense historic site, almost 150 years old, pointing out its unique design under the eyes of part of the management of the two companies and hiding in its bowels a machine described as "revolutionary" by each of its fathers.

Bigger, more efficient and more agile

20% more space, in terms of capacity and space for each traveler. 20% less energy consumption and a similar reduction in maintenance costs; up to 720 seats on board and modularity – the "M" of his name – which will allow it to travel in countries where the electrical voltage is different, to couple seven to ten cars between its two engines or even to adjust the place allocated to the first and second classes in a train: these are some of the characteristics that distinguish it from its predecessors.

"Instead of making an incremental evolution, as before, we started from a blank sheet. We reinvented everything", explains Jean-Baptiste Eymeoud, director of Alstom France, in proportions that he readily compares to the birth of the very first TGV, at the beginning of the eighties.

115 trains, 3.5 billion’€

Alstom mobilized eight of its sites to do this, including two in Occitanie. Tarbes for the traction system and Toulouse for certain electrical subassemblies. 2,500 of its employees are working on a considerable project: the SNCF has placed a first order for 115 units, for a value of 3.5 billion euros . The first five trainsets have been testing for two years, for their qualification and approval, expected in September. They have exceeded 50,000 km, particularly on the French network, without showing themselves, up to 320 km/h.

The first production trains will be delivered at the beginning of 2025 for entry into operational service "in the second half", assures& nbsp;Christophe Fanichet. Who does not hide that he will need for the summer season." It will be with a little year late, the TGV M was hoped for the Paris Olympic Games.

They will travel between Paris and Marseille in 2025, towards Montpellier, Perpignan and Nice in a second phase, confirms Alain Krakovitch, director of TGV-Intercités at SNCF.